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ICANN Grants Temporary Reprieve to Spamhaus

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the yet-i'm-still-getting-spamalanched dept.

daringone writes "ICANN released a statement that says they "...cannot comply with any order requiring it to suspend or place a client hold on Spamhaus.org or any specific domain name" They do, however leave the door open for the registrar that registered the domain name to then be forced to turn the lights off for Spamhaus."

7 of 271 comments (clear)

  1. A Little Background by olyar · · Score: 3, Informative
    From Wikipedia
    The Spamhaus Project is a largely volunteer effort founded by Steve Linford in 1998 that aims to track e-mail spammers and spam-related activity. It is named for the anti-spam jargon term coined by Linford, spamhaus, a pseudo-German expression for an ISP or other firm which spams or willingly provides service to spammers.
    Spamhaus is responsible for the two most widely-used DNS-based Blackhole List (DNSBLs, also known as Real-time Blackhole List or RBL) in the anti-spam arena -- the Spamhaus Block List (SBL) and the Exploits Block List (XBL). Many internet service providers and other Internet sites use these free services to reduce the amount of spam they take on. The SBL and XBL collectively protect almost 500 million e-mail users, according to Spamhaus' web page (April 2006).
    --
    Custom, hands-free Linux installs. Instalinux
  2. Re:Huh? by masklinn · · Score: 5, Informative

    Basically, ICANN says that they've not been ordered to act and suspend the spamhaus.org domain, and even if they had they couldn't do it "because ICANN does not have either the ability or the authority to do so".

    They also state that ICANN is not party in the lawsuit and is not involved in it.

    They end their posting by stating that only spamhaus.org's registrar or the Internet Registry have the ability and authority to suspend an individual domain name.

    They close their posting by stating that this comment was made in response of the community's interest (in the ICANN's position on the matter).

    --
    "The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
  3. Re:Huh? by Heem · · Score: 3, Informative

    e360: wah wah wah
    Spamhaus:
    e360: wah wah wah wah wah
    Spamhaus:
    Judge: OK, I guess you win, e360.
    Spamhaus:
    e360: Judge, please suspend their domain name until they pay us!
    Spamhaus:
    ICANN: Not my problem, man, go talk to the registrar.

    --
    Don't Tread on Me
  4. TUCOWS by Dynamoo · · Score: 5, Informative
    spamhaus.org is registered by TUCOWS who are a Canadian company and thus not subject to Illinois law.

    (If you haven't been following the 360 Insight vs Spamhaus thing then you'll have no idea what's going on here!)

    --
    Never email donotemail@WeAreSpammers.com
  5. Summary by Fnord666 · · Score: 3, Informative

    10 Second History
    Spamhaus listed E360 as spammers
    E360 sued Spamhaus in an Illinois court, saying that they weren't spammers.
    Spamhaus said that an Illinois court has no jurisdiction and didn't show up.
    E360 won a default judgement because Spamhaus didn't show up.
    Spamhaus still said the court had no authority and ignored the judgement.
    E360 filed for an injunction, asking the court to order either ICANN or the domain registrar to block the Spamhaus domain because Spamhaus ignored the judgement.

    This Story
    ICANN is saying leave us out of it. We don't have any part in it and can't do anything about it.

    --
    'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
  6. Re:You don't get it do you by CyberZen · · Score: 3, Informative

    Follow the actual story:

    1) Spamhaus is used in Illinois court.
    2) They APPEAR in court, and request that the case be moved to federal court, as IL does not have jurisdiction.
    3) The case IS moved to federal court.
    4) Spamhaus stops showing up.

    They requested the involvment of the federal district court. In your example, the defendant was never involved. Here, they were. If they had argued that the U.S. has no jurisdiction in IL, they probably would have won. Instead, they argued that the federal court had jusisdiction.

    It's a little different than your Hong Kong example.

  7. Re:Huh? by Stone+Pony · · Score: 4, Informative
    According to a very interesting analysis of the case which was originally linked from another /. story on this case a couple of days ago, Spamhaus's problem is that they tacitly accepted the court's jurisdiction at the start, which makes it very difficult to claim otherwise now:

    "Spamhaus may have waived personal jurisdiction as a defense early on in the case when they not only appeared, but then asked for the case to be removed from state court (where it was originally filed) and moved to federal district court (where it is today). Arguably, and this makes sense intuitively even if you don't understand the finer points of U.S. civil procedure, doing so inherently acknowledged the jurisdiction of the federal court."